A Late Liberation
by isoner
Summary: The Doctor returns to a planet he thought he had saved.


Doctor Who

To her credit, Ace stood quietly in the background, she did not show either discomfort, or boredom, nor did she sneak out the door when no one was looking. Instead her gaze was fixed on the Doctor; watching him; learning. The Doctor was proud of her for the way she had been maturing since they started traveling together, but he did not give any indication that he had noticed her.

The Doctor's attention was focused on the alien laying on a bed in front of him. Not the first time the Doctor had seen this alien on the verge of death, but this time the cause was old age, and there was nothing the Time Lord could do about it. "Is there anything I can do for you?" the Doctor asked.

"No…" the alien Grap said, "You already did more than I could have asked years ago." Like the rest of his kind, Grap was humanoid but vaguely pear shaped and covered in fur. The years had turned his fur gray and robbed him of his sight, turning his oversized brown eyes a milky white.

Smiling sadly the Doctor replied, "Yes, but it didn't work. You and your kind are still slaves to an unseen race."

"But it was a glorious week," Grap said, falling back into a deep sleep.

The Doctor stood, moving back to make room as Grap's loved ones moved in to be close in case he was taking a turn for the worse. He slipped outside, virtually unnoticed by anyone except Ace.

"What happened here, Professor?"

"I'm not sure."

"Don't give me that. You always know something about what's going on."

They began walking down the dark gray streets that were lined with dingy gray buildings, each of which represented a small one room hovel, even though the walls of each one reached so high into the sky that their tops were lost in the blackness of the sky above.

A misshapen obelisk stood in the middle of the road the Doctor had chosen. "That is an alter to their gods. Notice anything unusual about it?"

Ace walked around it, reaching out with a hesitant hand to touch the stone like surface. "Its alive," she said, jumping back.

"Not exactly," the Doctor said.

"Its unbelievably cold, and its vibrating and its… well, odd."

"It's a transdimensional alloy that acts as a sonic transmitter," the Doctor explained, " It was placed here by a race that never leaves its home planet. Part of this obelisk is still on that home world."

"But if they never leave their planet, how did they put it here?"

"From what I learned last time I was here, they were launched into space and fell as meteorites. Although they did have rather gentle landings."

"But why? What are they for?"

"Control. They use them as a two way link to see what is going on here and to impose their will on this world."

"And they can do all that with sonics?"

"Oh yes, Ace, take it from me; properly tuned sonic waves can be used to do just about anything. They may be watching us even now."

"Should we be talking in front of it then, Professor?"

"Ideally no, but I wanted to ask them," the Doctor said, moving to stand before the obelisk, "What do you want with this world?"

Silence.

"Did you really expect an answer?" Ace asked.

:"Not really, I didn't have much luck communicating with them last time; but to be honest we spent most of our time trying to unite the slave groups into a united group."

"We?"

"At the time I was traveling with two school teachers. We took a quick look around when we landed and that's when Barbara first found Grap. He had been wounded and she nursed him back to health. We took a liking to him, and got involved to help his people."

"What, you and two schoolteachers leading a rebellion?"

"And how would people describe us, do you think? Anyway, I should get back, he will be waking up soon, but you don't need to come with me, you can continue to look around. Just be careful of the Obelisks."

It was not long before the Doctor was again sitting beside the bed when Grap's unseeing eyes opened.

"Were you dreaming?" the Doctor asked.

"Yes… I remember in my dreams. What I was like before, the white walls, Barbara and Ian, and the glorious week of freedom after you left. You sound different now, but that may be my ears failing me as well."

"Your ears are fine, old friend, I do sound different from my last trip here. It seems I use to be a much older man in my youth," The Doctor replied.

"While I was recovering in the white room I explained our world to you… made sure you knew how the world really was. Serving the gods as slaves was our duty and place in life. Ian and Barbara each tried to explain that was not the only way of life, that there could be something better. I did not understand, not until you explained it to me. You understood what it was like to be here and know no other way, and let me fully understand how things could be."

"I did have a bit more experience in understanding other cultures. I'm glad I could help."

"Why did you come back Doctor?"

The Doctor gave an unseen humorous smile, "I have spent a lot of time recently cleaning up after myself, but I wanted a break. I came here because I thought I had been successful and wanted to… remember. I didn't know it had gone wrong."

Grap remembered the rushing armies they had assembled, charging the temples and pillars of the gods, dieing by the hundreds as they lashed out with their invisible sonic waves, but toppling the pillars one by one all across the planet, assisted by a shield that the Doctor had given them.

"The Gods granted us a week of freedom, and waited until we had to turn the shield off. We woke one day to find a new Temple. Then it began again."

"I miscalculated, I'm sorry. We can start again."

"No, Doctor, that won't be necessary, I wouldn't live long enough either way."

Elsewhere, Ace decided to finally track down where the rest of the people had gotten too. The Doctor talked of the world like it was a horrible place under the rule of some unseen slave drivers. All she had seen so far had been drab alleyways, and small yet surprisingly tall buildings, and while it all looked dreary and low budget there was nothing that looked particularly bad. Then she found the mine.

A huge strip mine stretching as far as her eyes could see just beyond the city limits being worked by hundreds, no, thousands of Grap's people. Surrounding the pit at regular intervals were pillars identical to the obelisk the Doctor had shown her in the city streets, only these were much more active. Slow workers were punished by a lash from a sonic wave, while other workers who were having trouble with particularly large rocks were aided in their work by more powerful blast that reduced it to rubble.

If the creatures that used these pillars could also hear through them… Ace wondered what a canister of Nitro-9 would sound like to them? She smiled at the thought of giving one of them major hearing loss, but knew better than to give in to the impulsive thought. Taking out just one wouldn't do anything; she would need to get them all at once for it to do more than just give some alien an earache.

She continued to observe the work, they seemed to be focusing on a particular type of rock; Ace was willing to wager it was the same sort of metal that the obelisks were made of. If the aliens never came to this world, then what was the point of digging up the metal in the first place?

Bags of the mined metal made their way back to the city carried by foot in baskets. While she had been in the city she had not given a second thought to seeing several blacksmith type buildings along the outskirts, but now that she saw the metal, it made more sense. The metal was mined, and then taken to the various blacksmith's to be refined and presumably shaped into more obelisks, but what then?

In between some of the blacksmith buildings, identified mainly by chimneys mounted on the sides, was another style of building. Virtually identical to all the others save for a slightly larger door, Ace couldn't resist the temptation to go inside. Before her within the building was a spiral staircase leading up the height of the building. None of the other buildings she had seen had any staircases leading up, despite the unusually tall nature of the buildings. She followed the staircase up, and up, and up; finally stepping out onto the roof of the building.

The sky was just as black from the top of the building as it was from down below, and she could see the flat rooftops of the other buildings laying out before her like giant stepping stones, the ground was lost in blackness. Obelisks were resting on many of the rooftops, but not randomly, it was like they were arranged in a circle around the building she was on. These were all things that she noticed, but none of them were the first thing that she saw.

The first thing she saw when she reached to top was what could only be a giant bird perch, and it was old. If she had to guess she would assume it had not been used in hundreds of years at least. She tried to think, to put the pieces all together the way the Doctor would, like the burn marks in the playground. A ring of obelisks that could do virtually anything, surrounding a building with a perch that had not been used in centuries and did not lend itself to any local wildlife. Ace came to the conclusion that the Doctor had been mistaken, maybe the aliens that had enslaved this world never left their home world now… but at one time they had set foot on this world… assuming the aliens were huge and had bird like feet. If that was the case then she figured that had something to their not letting the world go when the Doctor first helped the people drive them away.

"Did you not notice anything different about the walls, Doctor?" Grap asked his visitor.

The Doctor scowled at himself for not noticing a substantial change, assuming there was one. He thought that he must truly be distracted by his friends impending death for something to slip past his notice. He glanced at the walls, and yes, there was a significant addition to them. A foam like substance had been added to coat the wall, and mixed into the construction in some way as well. "What is this? You have discovered a sound absorbing compound."

Grap nodded with a raspy laugh, "Yes Doctor. You taught me to think of how life could be better; I followed the example you set during the rebellion and started looking for hidden weaknesses we could exploit. When they returned, the visited terrible reprisals upon us, but when we began to rebuild we noticed some materials were not effected by the God's wrath as others."

The Doctor smiled silently, he was proud of Grap for using the disaster to discover what compounds were resistant to sonic waves, and then turn those materials into building materials.

"We have a plan," Grap said, again drifting to sleep.

Standing, the Doctor summoned Grap's family and doctors. His old friend didn't have much time left.

"You came with the Doctor?" a voice asked, almost a soon as Ace stepped back onto the street.

"Yeah," she said, looking with suspicion into eyes that seemed filled with hero worship.

It was one of Grap's people, obviously a young man, based on the soot in his fur she would guess he worked in one of the blacksmith. "What's he like? I mean I've heard all the stories, but what is he like really?"

Ace shrugged. "He's the Doctor, he just wants to help but he's always in control."

"Just like the stories of the liberation," the young man replied, but then thought a moment. "Why did you say that last like it is a bad thing?"

"Its not a bad thing," she instinctively replied before letting her voice go distant, "Or maybe it is, I don't know. Either way, he didn't see this coming. We came here because he wanted to relive a happy ending, he didn't know it had all gone wrong. I guess he really can't control everything. No one can."

"Come see the workshop!" the young main enthusiastically demanded, pulling her along by the arm.

In the workshop, the blacksmith's fire was burning, and an obelisk was apparently under construction while a smaller one was on a shelf. Standing against a wall were what appeared to be walls of some portable structure that were ornately decorated. They gave ace the impression that they were for a church or maybe something even grander.

"I grew up hearing stories about the Doctor, the Liberation and the Week of Freedom. I wanted to be like them, free the world, a thought that was unheard of in the previous generation, before the Doctor." The boy held up a little house that looked like it had been made of miniature versions of the ornate panels leaning against the wall. He set the house over the smaller obelisk that was on a shelf.

"What is all this?" Ace asked.

"Part of it was my idea!" The boy said, "I have been making these sound absorbent walls that look so beautiful the Gods will think we are honoring them. We will enshrine the alters with them and silence them for good."

"Will that be enough? Won't they just come back again like before."

"It wont be like before, this time we will do it all on our own, and if they come back again, we will do it again," the young man spoke with an infectious pride that was not present of the slaves Ace had seen working in the pit. Maybe the Doctor had failed to fully liberate this world the last time he was here, but it seemed the after effects of that battle would yet free the world.

Ace excused herself; and made her way back to the TARDIS, expecting to find the Doctor along the way, if he hadn't already made his way back to the TARDIS, then she was sure she could find him at Grap's place.

She found the Doctor not far from the TARDIS; he seemed to be wandering the streets aimlessly. She wouldn't ask him more specifically why he was doing so, she knew it would spout off some outrageous explanation to hide his feelings. She had noticed how bad the Doctor could be when it came to dealing with loss when it was someone he cared about; Grap must have died.

"Is he…?" She started to ask.

"An hour ago," he sullenly replied.

She waited until the silence was unbearable; "Are you ready to go, Professor?"

"We should stay, put things right."

"No, Doctor." Ace said, causing the Doctor to turn sharply, staring at her. She felt like he was gazing deep into her own soul. "Not this time, they have got it covered this time."

A hint of a smile touched the Doctors face and Ace realized the irony; for the first time she could remember she felt she knew something the Doctor didn't. "Alright then, Ace, lets go."


End file.
